


Sex Doesn't Alarm Me

by objetpetita



Series: Intimacies [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Friendship, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sherlock sees through everyone and everything in seconds, Slash, Unrequited, what’s incredible though is how spectacularly ignorant he is about some things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:18:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objetpetita/pseuds/objetpetita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After an unlucky encounter with a couple of homophobes in an alley, John spends some time reconsidering things. Sherlock remains, as per usual, hyperaware of important things (like the amount of mud on a shoe or the quality of any given toiletry product), and half-insensible to irrelevant things (like feelings).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sex Doesn't Alarm Me

**Author's Note:**

> Given that fanfic is always subjecting John to sexuality-questioning, I wanted to try out what would might happen if John’s shifting ideas about his sexuality weren’t solely, directly, or even primarily a result of Sherlock himself. So, to sum up: here comes a bit of porn followed deductions.

The morning after John was attacked in an alley, he woke up angry. Not feeling especially traumatised or especially grateful to be alive—no, on this morning, John was _angry_. Three whiskeys, two idiots, one stupidly lucky punch—that was all it took to catch Captain John Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers unawares. John wanted to crawl out of his own skin. 

 

Not unexpectedly, at breakfast Sherlock appeared to be as immune to the intimate you-mean-a-lot-to-me conversation they’d had in the middle of the night as he was insensible to John’s glowering mood, and as a result had only criticism for John’s shoddy detective work of the night before. 

“You didn’t manage to speak to the barman about Martin de Vries?”

“I planned to.” John fidgeted. He couldn’t bring himself to say  _But then he turned up looking interested and it gave me a fright so I fled._ “It should count for something that I did manage to speak to Kit de Vries, though, which you thought I wouldn’t be able to do.”

Sherlock looked half willing to concede the point. “Tell me his exact words,” he demanded. John very nearly felt gratified.

Upon the retelling, however, Sherlock did nothing to mask his incredulity. “You played gay?” he scoffed. “ _You?_ ”

“You’re not the only one who can do detective work,” John shot back, insulted. “Why is it so hard to believe?”

Sherlock raised both eyebrows. “Oh, I don’t know,” he quipped, exaggeratedly tapping his chin. “Perhaps the six separate occasions on which you’ve explicitly assured me that you’re decisively, emphatically, absolutelynot gay?” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I’ve only _known_ you six weeks, John. That averages once a week.”

And then, just like that, the anger was back. It flared bright and hot in John’s chest, and he honestly couldn’t say if he was angry with Sherlock, angry with the fuckers responsible for the aching in his ribs, or angry with himself. The strength of it nearly overwhelmed him right there in the kitchen. Startled at himself, John adopted Sherlock’s usual code of conduct and left the table without a word. 

What followed was angry pacing around his bedroom followed by an angry wank which did not ease any of the tension it was meant to. He was doing some angry staring at the ceiling when he decided he was probably not going to be able to solve whatever it was on his own, holed up in his bedroom. Talking to Sherlock about it, though, was right out. Something in him had been knocked loose the other night, but John didn’t know what—or even how to begin to describe it—and anyway Sherlock was frankly terrible at feelings. 

In the end, he decided not to think too hard about why, but going back to the bar and talking to Keith was the only thing he could think of doing. He went to sleep that night telling himself he would go in a couple of days, if he still felt... whatever it was he was feeling. 

 

Keith wasn’t behind the bar. John ordered a cheap whiskey to cover his disappointment. It wasn’t until he’d nearly finished his drink that he recognized the familiar American accent behind him. 

“Originally, I’m from California,” Keith was saying as he pushed through the crowd and up to the bar. He ended up at the section of the bar directly behind John. In the crush of people, his back was almost flush against John’s. “Vodka tonic, please—thanks, David,” John heard him say to the bartender. “Want anything?” That last was directed, John assumed at whomever he’d been chatting to before. 

A funny sinking feeling took hold somewhere in John’s abdomen. Oh, well. Whatever this was, he was going to see it through. Watsons were, for better or for worse, constitutionally unable to back down once they’d committed to a course of action. John turned around and touched the other man’s shoulder with a full, firm, unshaking palm. 

Keith rotated into the touch, and a warm curiosity touched the corners of his dark eyes when he recognized John. “Hello again,” he greeted. 

John drew in a breath. The bloke on the other side of Keith, presumably the one he’d just bought a cocktail for, looked on mildly. He was quite tall and quite young. John felt small and crinkly by comparison. He hoped the low light obscured the faint bruise on his cheek, evidence of the disastrous culmination of his last visit. 

“I wondered if we might still have that drink.” John’s fingers clenched and unclenched as his eyes darted to the tall skinny fellow and then back to Keith, who wore a small, bemused smile. “Sometime. When you’re not busy.”

Keith sipped from his vodka tonic. “Really?”

John nodded firmly. “Yep.”

Smoothly, Keith laid a hand on John’s arm and cast an apologetic glance in the direction of his erstwhile companion. “You don’t mind if I excuse myself, do you? John’s an old friend.” He winked at John, who briefly registered not knowing what to do with his hands. 

The slim bloke lifted his glass politely. “Sure. Another time, then.” 

When he’d gone, Keith fixed his full attention on John. “Change of heart?”

John threw back the last of his whiskey. “Yeah. Dunno why, exactly, but here I am.” 

Keith studied John’s face, not with the sharp, invasive focus John was accustomed to facing in the not-at-all-privacy of his own home, but with two gentle, sparkling dark eyes that made something begin to simmer beneath his skin. Which John took to be a good sign, as far as maybe not being entirely heterosexual went. 

“Want another?” Keith inquired, pointing to John’s empty glass.

“Yes, all right,” said John, looking for a bartender until Keith waved him away from the bar. 

“I’ll get it,” he offered. 

John couldn’t hear over the music once Keith turned to speak to the barman, and it became clear from the moment he brought his new glass to his mouth that this was not the cheap whiskey he’d ordered before. John furrowed his brow. “Ah, er, Keith.”

“Sorry, I know it’s not what you had before,” the other man said, looking more amused than actually sorry. “I couldn’t bring myself to let you drink another glass of that total shit.”

John smiled around the lip of his glass. “It was shit, wasn’t it?” It was difficult to protest with his nose buried in the smell of a much, much nicer whiskey, but John made an effort anyway. “But this is... I mean, I’m no expert, but this one tastes a bit _unnecessarily_ nice.”

Keith waved his own drink in an good-natured but dismissive gesture. He looked down at John in mock seriousness. “Believe me when I say there is _nothing_ I’d rather spend money on than trying to impress a straight man who seems for all the world like he’s tripped and fallen completely by accident into the best-fitting pants I’ve ever seen in my life.”

John spent half a moment wondering _how does he know about the fucking pants_ before Keith spluttered a mouthful back into his vodka tonic. It was the most ungraceful thing John had seen him do yet, and something about it it was, frankly, a relief. The uncertain frown John had been wearing for days finally eased.

“Sorry,” Keith was saying. “I’m sorry. I said ‘pants’ and your face...” He held the back of a hand to his mouth and paused to collect himself. “I meant your trousers. I was trying to hint that your bum looks nice in those _trousers_.”

Then, John was laughing. The nervousness he’d been turning round and round in his head all day receded. The “am I gay after all” question was distant, abstract, unnecessary. At the moment, he was just flirting. And John was good at flirting. Any worries he’d had about cocks and low voices and stubble seemed unimportant after all.

“Perhaps if Americans could learn to speak English properly, we wouldn’t have this problem,” he prodded. 

Keith grinned defiantly. “Soccer,” he said. “Dollar bill.” 

“Shakespeare’s weeping,” John returned, putting his glass down and making a show of covering his ears.

“Cookie. Sidewalk.” Keith advanced menacingly. “French fries, flashlight, dumpster.” 

The bar was a solid pressure in the middle of John’s back. Keith was directly in front of him, close but not touching, lit all around by the blue ambient light of the club. He looked quite fetching with his soft, full lips curled up on one side like that. There was an unmistakeable tingle, like an engine revving in up in John’s chest. The same set of instincts that made him very good at flirting were saying  _now right now time for kissing,_ so he took his hands from his ears and leaned all the way in to purse his lips against Keith’s. 

Not for nothing had John Watson learned to trust his instincts when it came to the opposite sex. Or now the same sex as well, apparently. 

Keith’s mouth followed him back as he pulled away, and John leaned comfortably on the bar as he let the other man taste his lips: first the top one, where he sucked lightly, and then the bottom, to which he applied the briefest tug with his teeth. John let out a long, happy breath and fit his hand around Keith’s hip. He coupled the press of his hand with the press of his tongue, which he slid firmly into the lime and tonic taste of Keith’s mouth. 

After a moment of thoroughly sucking John’s tongue, the taller man broke the kiss and fell back, though not enough to dislodge John’s hand on his hip. “Things are going well on my end,” he said. “How about on yours?”

John laughed but did stop to consider the question. The kiss had been good. And even if Keith’s obviously fastidious facial care regimen _did_ leave any stubble on his jaw, John didn’t think he would mind in the slightest. So kissing another man seemed to be all right. More than all right. 

“If I’m perfectly honest,”—at which Keith raised his eyebrows encouragingly—“I would love nothing more than to continue snogging you. Snogging you is brilliant. But you should know I’ve never even _considered_ kissing another man before. And I’m not sure this isn’t just a psychologically fucked reaction to getting knocked about the other night by some idiots who thought I was gay.” 

He waited for a reaction. Keith blinked a few times, but didn’t move away, so John kept his hand where it was. “Bastards,” the other man declared at last. “I am so sorry you were assaulted like that.” He spoke with a seriousness that John took to mean he was not without some experience in that area. 

“Oh, I’m fine,” John hurried to say. “Just a bit...” He waved his bandaged hand a little to illustrate. “And, and fucking angry.” 

Keith’s mouth twitched in an empathetic smile. 

 

What followed were several minutes of the most languid public kissing John had ever had. Once in a while, they broke apart to speak or sip from their drinks. There was something intoxicating about the volume of the music, the movement of the crowd at the periphery of his attention, the utterly unabashed way Keith returned the swipes and caresses of his tongue.

Eventually, John tipped back the last of the whiskey. Keith reached around him to place both of their empty glasses on the bar. Then, without preamble, his mouth descended on John’s neck.

“Finally,” he thought he heard Keith mutter into his skin, though he didn’t have time to ask for clarification, since Keith’s tongue reached out to brush the skin just below John’s earlobe. John gasped in surprise. His hips snapped forward unbidden, making him newly conscious of the fact that, despite decades of not-insignificant sexual experience, parts of this were entirely new to him. One part in particular, which Keith ground gently against John’s hip.

The answering rush of sensation in John’s groin was enough to make him growl. He pulled Keith’s face up to his own and held him there, covering Keith’s mouth with his own, roughly, urgently pressing inside. 

When John allowed them both to come up for air, Keith’s chest was heaving rapidly. 

John grinned in satisfaction. “All right?”

“Yeah, good,” Keith supplied, bringing his mouth close to John’s ear so that he wouldn’t have to speak over the music. “Just,” he breathed in and out helplessly, “if you can fuck my mouth that well with your _tongue_ , I can’t _imagine_ what you could do with your cock.”

The entire surface of John’s body quivered.

The tip of Keith’s tongue ran slowly around the shell of John’s ear. “Listen,” he said. It felt as though he was talking directly to John’s crotch. “If you’re interested, you could come back to mine.”

“ _Yes_ ,” said John, to the hand gripping his arse as well as to the invitation itself. “Er, I’ll just stop by the gents for a minute, all right?” 

“Sure thing.” 

 

In the loo, the music wasn’t quite as loud, and John had stepped into a cubicle before he realized the sounds issuing from the other side of the thin wall were distinctly... well, unrelated to the purposes for which one usually used the loo. _Okay,_ he told himself silently. _Two minutes ago you were in a much more public place with your tongue buried in another man’s mouth, so there’s no reason to be a prude about two blokes getting off in a bathroom cubicle._

He resolved to finish quickly and leave them to it, but then the rhythm of the slurping sound sped up, and he recognized the voice that groaned and mumbled, “Shit.”

John cursed his luck. _Kit de Vries_. Did listening to the man receive a blowjob count as relevant to the case? Or could he simply pretend he didn’t recognize the voice and get back to Keith, who was waiting and turned on and possibly still tasting John on his lips?

While John dithered, however, de Vries took the decision out of his hands by groaning “Shit,” again and coming, judging by the sound of his partner’s surprised half-gag. Then, there followed a quick sigh and a zip and the sound of the door being flung open. John stood stock still and tried to be as unremarkable as possible. 

A higher tenor voice followed de Vries out of the cubicle and voiced the very thought that was running through John’s head. “A little more warning might’ve been nice, Kit.”

De Vries made a sound that could have been repentant. “Sorry,” he said blandly.

“Oh,” said the man airily, not quite sounding placated, “it’s... fine.” John heard him move nearer to where de Vries was standing. Thanks to a lull between songs, the sound of a hand running up fabric—a sleeve, John guessed—was audible for a moment, and then de Vries’s voice sounded again, more forcefully. 

“Oh no you don’t. You’re not kissing me with that mouth til you’ve rinsed it with water at least.”

“What?” exclaimed his companion. John nodded unconsciously in agreement. Bit of bad form, that. De Vries didn’t answer, and John heard the jilted man storm around and past him. 

John waited for de Vries and his companion to clear out before he emerged. Keith was still at the bar, now conversing familiarly with a small knot of men. When John approached, Keith raised an arm and draped it around his shoulders to make introductions. As soon as John's hand had been passed around and shaken, Keith turned his gaze to John and asked, perfectly bluntly, “So, back to mine?”

John glanced toward the men he’d only just been introduced to, and they looked right back with interest. A flush rose in his cheeks. “Er.” He laughed nervously. “Yes?”

“You’re gorgeous,” Keith told him. “Got to run, gents,” he told his friends. One of them winked at John as Keith waved brightly and tugged him by the hand toward the exit. John blushed harder. 

Walking in the cooler air of the street, John let his arm fall into place at Keith’s waist and Keith obligingly fell into step close beside him. “All right?” asked the American.

John hummed an affirmative. “Overheard a rather awful-sounding blowjob while I was in the loo,” he joked. “I’m hoping whatever we end up doing turns out better than it did.”

Keith snorted. “I hope it didn’t turn you off of the whole gay thing altogether,” he said. “Though I admit my reasons are primarily selfish.”

 

Keith’s flat was small but fashionably accoutred. A couple of hardcover books were tastefully scattered across a low table in the sitting room. 

“Have you read _American Gods_?” asked Keith, following John’s gaze. 

“Hm? Oh, no,” responded John. “I was just thinking books are a nice, normal thing to have out in the sitting room. Unlike... well, unlike most of the things currently out in my sitting room.”

Keith tugged him over to the sofa. “What’s out in your sitting room?”

John let himself be guided down into a sitting position. “Usually? My flatmate, Sherlock,” he said, eyes following as Keith, instead of sitting down, moved around to stand in front of him. “He does experiments, of a sort. I basically”—the cushions dipped as Keith placed a knee alongside each of John’s thighs—“live in a mammalian research laboratory.”

“Like, with cages of rabbits?” Keith settled down in John’s lap.

“More like... jars of actual human toes.” John winced. “Sorry,” he apologized. “Not really a sexy thing to be talking about.”

“Not really, no,” Keith said good-naturedly, not quite kissing him, but nudging John’s lips with his own.  “But I’m really very turned on at the moment, so you could be talking about book lice or cannibals or cat piss and I doubt I’d be deterred.”

John laughed, a surprised, chest-deep laugh. “Kiss me,” he said.

After a few minutes of kissing, Keith slowly, gently moved a hand from John’s neck to the top button of his shirt. His fingers reached in around it, resting on John’s bare skin. John pushed up, tentatively, into the touch, and touched his tongue to Keith’s full bottom lip. 

“Good?” Keith asked, seeking verbal confirmation. John slipped his hands up under the hem of the other man’s shirt. 

“Good,” he agreed, flexing his fingers. 

Keith’s hands moved, traced the placket of John’s shirt, a straight line down to his belly. He spread both hands flat and pressed, his palms just at the top of John’s hips, running his hands around John’s body like he wanted to pull John up into him but wasn’t sure if John would like it. 

“Yes,” John said in response, sliding his hips forward so that their bodies fitted together. Keith’s hips pressed down in return, the rough friction of his jeans on John’s trousers sending another, more emphatic “ _yes_ ,” right out of John’s mouth. 

“Not gay,” Keith didn’t quite ask, grinding against him, running his mouth around the John’s ear again. 

“I, I dunno,” John managed to respond.

Keith hummed. “I want to suck you off,” he said into John’s neck. 

John dropped his head against the cushions and groaned happily. “I don’t think anyone’s ever said that right out to me,” he said, working Keith’s shirt up and over his head. 

Keith sat up slightly to let John tentatively run both hands down his chest. The muscles there felt good beneath his palms. Unfamiliar, but good. 

“‘S good,” John thought he might as well say out loud. 

“Thanks,” Keith chuckled. 

When he laughed, the plane of Keith’s belly became particularly captivating, so John ducked his head to try sucking a little love bite into it. The noise Keith made vibrated between them, so John hoisted him up by the hips, careful with the bandaged hand, and aimed lower, sucking lightly at the skin beneath Keith’s navel. 

“Oh. Kay,” Keith breathed, which made John realize how close his face was, for the first time in his life, to another man’s erection. The line of it showed clearly in Keith’s stretched-taut jeans. 

Tilting his head to the side, John looked up at Keith’s face. He pulled his hand round Keith’s hip, his thumb sliding across denim to the ridge of Keith’s trapped prick. Keith’s hum curled into a groan. John gingerly pressed his bandaged palm against the front of his own trousers. 

“A proposition for you,” Keith offered.

“Whatever it is, I’ll probably say yes.” John devoted himself to groping Keith’s arse unapologetically. 

Keith chuckled. “Up then,” he directed, standing. “We both need to be naked for what I have in mind.” 

As soon as they were both undressed, Keith squeezed John’s hand and lay down on the sofa, face up. John hung back for a moment, wrapping his mind around the sight of Keith’s cock, heavy and hard against his belly. Keith tugged, drew John level with his head, then cupped a hand behind John’s knee. John submitted to the direction with interest, letting Keith draw his leg up onto the sofa. 

“I want to suck you off,” Keith repeated. His fingers rubbed up and down John’s thigh. His breaths were fast and warm; John could just barely feel them puff across the head of his cock. “And I want you to be in a position to fuck my mouth.” 

John garbled out a few shocked nonsense syllables. 

“You seem like the kind of guy who pays attention,” Keith explained to his balls. John closed his eyes against the sight of his dick laid across Keith’s face, focused hard on comprehending the words being said to him. “I trust you.” 

One gentle suck from Keith’s mouth was the only further convincing John required. He shifted fully onto the sofa, his knees on either side of Keith’s head, bracing his hands on either side of Keith’s hips. It brought him face to face with Keith’s cock, which was disconcerting, though not exactly unwelcome. 

“You don’t have to respond in kind,” Keith murmured against the inside of his thigh. “But I wouldn’t say no to a hand, if your injured one can hold you up.” 

John giggled. “Oh, Christ, I’m forty,” he said, staring at the very erect, very perplexing, surprisingly  _interesting_ prick such a scant distance from his face. “I thought I was more or less done learning new things about sex.”

“You’re forty?” Keith’s head lifted up a bit to nuzzle again at John’s balls. 

“Why?” John rasped, cradling Keith’s erection in his palm. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.” 

John’s forehead dropped against the other man’s thigh. “Dammit.”

“Shh, doesn’t matter. Think of it this way: I’ve got fifteen years of gay sexual experience on you. So in a way—” he pursed his lips against the head of John’s cock and John’s vision whited out for a moment, “—I’m the cradle-robber here.”

John mumbled something, he wasn’t even sure what, into Keith’s leg. 

“You can thrust whenever you want to,” Keith invited pleasantly. “Just go a little slow, and, you know, make sure I’m getting enough air.” 

“ _Fuck,_ ” said John, as Keith’s mouth opened up around him. 

Porn had never given John to believe that facefucking could be languid, but that’s exactly what it proved to be with Keith. Every few thrusts, John lifted up and Keith bobbed his head, licking and breathing all over him, seeming perfectly content to keep himself and John on the outer edge of urgency, hard and wanting but not desperate. 

The slow pace gave John ample time to investigate a burgeoning interest, both visual and tactile, in Keith’s cock. Keith’s toes flexed appreciatively when he slid his hand up and around the head of it. When John tightened the channel of his fist and pushed down, Keith groaned right around John’s own cock, which was fucking brilliant.  

Before he’d consciously thought to do it, John’s face had dipped downward, toward Keith’s erection. Obeying the instinct, John exhaled, letting his breath announce his intentions. Keith hummed and swallowed him down again. _Okay,_ John coached himself, _cock in mouth_. _It’s not weird, it’s just a cock. Which you’re going to put in your mouth._

John kept up the unrushed rhythm of his hips, wrapping his mouth just around the head of Keith’s prick. Keith arched in appreciation. John pressed on, very slowly, waiting for his throat to close against the invasion. The urge to gag, however, never came. John found himself, wide-eyed, with the whole length of Keith down his throat. 

“Oh my god,” gasped Keith, pulling off of John with a pop. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

John didn’t answer. He slid up, then pushed down again until his nose was buried in the curly hair at the base of Keith’s cock. Keith made a helpless, delicious noise. 

Again and again, John dipped his head to let the whole length of Keith slide over his tongue. When the taste of precome tinged his mouth, John backed off to catch his breath. Considering the flavour, he lapped at the head a few times more.  _Good,_ he decided. 

“Come in my mouth,” he invited. “I want to make you come.”

Keith came apart exactly the way John’s liked his lovers to do: loudly and un-self-consciously. The swallowing was less than graceful, but John figured a heretofore-undiscovered lack of a gag reflex more than compensated for a little drooliness at the end. 

Keith’s warm lips closed over him and after only a few more thrusts, John was coming, his forehead pressed hard against Keith’s hip.

 

Riding the Tube home late the next morning, John could not have cared less about the grin cemented on his face. He felt like a superhero. How else could a bloke feel, finding out he’d spent forty years _not_ utilising an in-born talent (and, apparently, a fetish) for deepthroating? 

 

\---

 

John arrived home humming some reprehensibly saccharine American pop tune. An unprecedented scent arrived with him, synthetic and colorful. 

“You’ll never guess what I did last night,” the sandy-haired man said brightly. He clattered around the kettle, still humming. 

“Had an orgasm.” Sherlock didn’t bother to look up from the microscope. 

A pause, then a titter. 

“Right in one.” 

The pop song returned, this time with lyrics. Sherlock made every effort to refocus on the grit he’d scraped from Martin de Vries’ shoes.

To no avail. The sheer inanity sliced right through his concentration. Add the fact that John kept switching into a ridiculous falsetto to hit the higher notes and all shoe-related investigations were fucked for the immediate future. 

“You are far from twenty-two,” he couldn’t help commenting. 

John set a hot mug near Sherlock’s right hand and sat across the table with one of his own. “Yes, well,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I can’t sing the song.”

“It’s an idiotic song.”

“I’ll be sure to inform Taylor Swift of your opinion.” 

They sipped in silence. 

“I did though.”

Sherlock raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“Have an orgasm.”

“Mm.”

“And another this morning,” they said in unison. 

John grinned, all teeth. He stood and went to the fridge, took out some cheese. The man looked so pleased with himself; it struck Sherlock as odd. John did not tend to flaunt sexual exploits, nor did he suffer from any difficulty attracting partners for intercourse. In light of these facts, Sherlock re-examined the available evidence. 

“She’s an early riser, your friend,” he supplied. 

“Yep.” John set about assembling the components of a sandwich.

“Early enough that after you left her flat, you felt you had time to browse through the shops in her neighborhood.”

John continued slicing a tomato, his silence expectant.

“Attractive enough that your bolstered self-esteem drove you to purchase new cologne. Expensive stuff, John; I wouldn’t have expected such frivolity.” 

“That’s rich, coming from you.” John reached out and tugged a dark curl down between Sherlock’s eyes. “How many rounds do you go with a blow-dryer before you’re ready to be seen in the mornings?”

The detective frowned. It would seem three middle-of-the-night heartfelt conversations (Sherlock remembered little of the first one, of course, but he’d deduced in the morning that it had been intimate in some way) was the threshold at which flatmates-turned-friends began touching one another in the light of day. 

Sherlock considered, then concluded that the touching would be fine. He did not need to worry about his own unavoidable somatic responses to contact from John, as he remained secure in the knowledge—especially given the ease with which John was currently sharing information about his sexual relations with attractive, early-rising women—that his attraction to John was both ill-fated and imperceptible to the man himself. 

It was almost comical, in fact, how easily a touch of misdirection during their first dinner at Angelo’s had succeeded at rendering John impervious to Sherlock’s little problem. (He refused to call it “feelings,” thank you very much.)

He’d first noticed it—the little problem—when he and John shook hands on the day John came to see the flat. The  _problem_ had sparked its way up Sherlock’s arm at John’s touch. The shock of it rendered him awkward for those first few minutes in 221B, before he was able to quash the sensation beneath the weight of a hundred deductions regarding John’s staunch heterosexuality.

Sherlock broke his own reverie, plugged back in to the portion of his hard drive running through deductions on John’s new acquaintance.

“I’m positively tickled to see you’ve taken so thoroughly to the clothing I selected,” Sherlock said dryly, watching John tear an obscenely sized bite out of his sandwich. “Though you might want to give her Molly’s number.”

John looked up and cocked his head to the side, swallowed. “Okay, you’ve lost me,” he said. 

Sherlock smirked. “Perhaps they could start a support group, as they share an unfortunate tendency to pursue men who are or appear to be gay.” He gestured vaguely from himself to John. 

John looked down at his clothes. 

“Okay, fine, I look gay in this. By whatever nonsense rubric you use to determine that.” 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “It isn’t—”

“But more importantly,” John spoke over him. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say anything even remotely self-reflexive without cover of darkness.” He smiled broadly.

“Ugh,” commented Sherlock. 

John was undeterred. “Next thing you know, we’ll be talking about _feelings_ , you big teddy bear.”

Sherlock only shrugged. 

 

After John finished the sandwich and wandered upstairs looking thoughtful, Sherlock did spare a moment to sniff gingerly at the coat John left behind. Somewhat reluctantly, he was forced to concede that John had shown a modicum of good taste in his selection. The notes of the cologne complemented but did not overpower John’s own bright, clean scent. The effect was... Well. Not unpleasant. 

Sherlock put the coat down and returned to the microscope with a vengeance. His little problem was not important. John’s one-night stand was not important. What was important was the fact that the bruising patterns from the corpse experiment supported a fall from a third floor window. Also important was convincing Lestrade to let him into the flat on the third floor—the flat  _beneath_ the one in which Anderson (idiot) remained incorrectly convinced the crime had occurred. He’d of course returned to try and speak with the inhabitant (last name Pinsky, according to the buzzers) or to pick the lock on the door, but Lestrade’s team proved irritatingly competent at barring him access. 

 

\---

 

This time, John woke as soon the door to his bedroom swung open. He didn’t seem surprised; just calmly propped himself up on his elbows to say, “You know, some flatmates get to know each other between the hours of six and eleven. Over beer. With the telly on.”

Sherlock glanced at the clock. Half two, he noted with mild surprise. The last time he’d bothered to look, it had been just after five. He fiddled with the doorknob, rotated it a quarter turn to the right, then the left. “If you don’t want to talk—”

“No, it’s.” John rubbed his eyes. “It’s fine.” His voice like this, throaty and deep, made Sherlock’s ears tingle.

He hung in the doorway, though he knew perfectly well John couldn’t see the shade of his ears in the dark.

“Is this case-related?”

Sherlock provided a neutral sound.

John sat up a little more. “Or, you know, did you want to talk about earlier?”

No. Maybe. “Why?” was what he said out loud. Sherlock was not about to admit to not being quite sure why he’d come upstairs to John’s room.

“In retrospect,” John said, choosing his words carefully, “I think it might not have been the most gracious thing for me to make light of what you said. About the, the gay thing. You were quiet afterwards, and I wanted to apologise.”

“I wasn't bothered.” Sherlock knew the untruth would be evident, even to John.

John’s shadowy face tilted to the side. Amusement tinged his voice. “If you were, though. It would be perfectly understandable to want to talk about it. Or to want... I dunno, a reassuring hug.” He chuckled gently. 

“I don’t need to talk about it.” The doorknob clicked and rattled in his hand. 

“...okay.”

Sherlock couldn’t decide what to do next, but that was fine. Surely John, like most normal people, would soon feel awkward enough to make a decision for him. 

Oddly, John’s decision, when it arrived, was not one of the six Sherlock had identified as most likely. It wasn’t even in the top fifteen. 

The smaller man was halfway across the room before Sherlock thought to take a step backward. 

“Oh, no you don’t; come back here,” John commanded. Then, John's sleep-warms arms were wrapping around him, hands coming to rest in the center of his back. Sherlock grunted, leaving his arms dangling at his sides. 

“I did give you two options.” John spoke into Sherlock’s chest. It tingled, too. “You declined the first one.” 

“I didn’t think you were  _serious_.” 

“Hug me back anyway, you bastard.”

Complying called up a vague memory at the edges of Sherlock’s awareness. “Did we do this the night of the drugs ring case?”

John’s head bobbed and he released Sherlock from the embrace. “Sort of. You hugged me in the kitchen.” He grinned. “Told me we should embrace more often.” 

While he considered this, Sherlock allowed himself to be led to John’s bed, let John tug him into a seated position. Next to him, John sat cross-legged. His knees were close to Sherlock’s thigh. Experimentally, Sherlock shifted his legs apart so that the fabric of John’s pyjama bottoms just touched the fabric of his trousers.

“Sherlock, I hope you know I meant what I said from the start. It’s all fine. I joked about talking about feelings because I was pleased, not because I wanted to put you off.”

The detective nodded. Given their relative positions and the fact that John seemed unbothered, it appeared that talking openly about Sherlock’s sexuality had not affected John’s stolid perception of their relationship as entirely, mutually platonic. Satisfied, he made to get up.

A hand on his shoulder held him back. 

“Look, Sherlock, could you please say one bloody thing about it before you bugger off to the sofa again? Give me a clue, just one, about where we stand.”

Sherlock paused, reviewed the deductions of the day, and then scooted up and over, lying flat on the unrumpled side of the bed. “I’m sleeping here tonight,” he announced. 

“ _Sherlock—_ ”

“If you’re going to act as though we are teenaged girls at a slumber party, John, then I have no choice but to indulge your delusion.”

John sucked in his cheeks, pursed his lips. “Right. Decoding that: you’ve called the bedroom a place of intimacy, and the last time we were here we talked about how important this friendship is to both of us, so... spending the night in my bedroom is your way of saying that you forgive me and value our relationship?”

Sherlock fluffed his (well, John’s) pillow pointedly.

 

They were both just beginning to drift off when John grunted into the silence. 

“Forgot to mention,” he mumbled. “I did some detecting on my own. At the...” a sleepy snuffle, which was _too_ endearing, damn it all, “...the club. Overheard Kit de Vries getting off in a bathroom cubicle.” John giggled, his hands flexing in the blankets. It put Sherlock in mind of a housecat, kneading with its paws. “Dunno if that helps with your investigation, but there you go. De Vries is shit at getting blowjobs.”

Sherlock made an interrogative noise. 

“Wouldn’t even kiss the poor bloke after,” John clarified. “Made ‘im rinse ‘is mouth out.”

“Bad form,” commented Sherlock. 

“‘at’s what  _I said too_ ,” John agreed emphatically. 

Sherlock snickered into the pillows. Things were fine. Things were good. 


End file.
